Authors
Astou Seck, Amir Mirzaei, Zahra Shayegan, Balla D Ngom, Dongling Ma, Mohamed Chaker
Publication date
2024
Journal
Advanced Sustainable Systems
Pages
2300496
Description
In heterojunction photocatalysts, the band edge alignment and internal electric field (IEF) direction significantly affect the charge carrier separation, thus the photoconversion efficiency. For example, because of an unfavorable band alignment and compared to BiVO4 alone, BiVO4/TiO2 results in ≈24% reduction in photocurrent density in this study. Herein, a tungsten‐doped VO2 (W‐VO2) thin film is inserted between BiVO4 and TiO2 to modify unfavorable spike‐like conduction band offset and IEF direction in ternary heterojunction. After reversing the IEF direction and engineering the band edges through W‐VO2 insertion, the photocurrent density is enhanced by ≈145% and ≈91% compared to BiVO4/TiO2 and BiVO4, respectively at 1.23 V versus RHE. Besides, under visible light irradiation, the kinetics rate constant for tetracycline removal by BiVO4/W‐VO2/TiO2 photocatalyst is 225% higher than that of BiVO4 …